Daphne Hasbani, J.J. Balaban — Weddings

May 19, 2013

Dr. Daphne Maya Hasbani and Jack Jeffrey Balaban are to be married Sunday. Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann is to perform the ceremony at the Cira Center in Philadelphia.

The bride, 36, is keeping her name. She is a fellow in clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In August, she is to become a pediatric neurologist at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia and an assistant professor in the department of pediatrics at Drexel University College of Medicine. She received bachelor’s degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester and a medical degree and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Washington University in St. Louis.

She is a daughter of Nancy Hasbani and Dr. Moshe Hasbani of Woodbridge, Conn. The bride’s father is a neurologist and an assistant clinical professor of neurology at Yale. Her mother retired as a school psychologist from the Louis P. Slade Middle School in New Britain, Conn. Last December, after the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., she became that school’s psychologist and works at its temporary location, in Monroe, Conn.

The groom, 39, is known as J. J. He is a media strategist at the Campaign Group, a political advertising firm in Philadelphia, where he helps create television, radio and Internet ad campaigns for Democratic candidates. He graduated from Princeton.

He is a son of Susan E. Steigman and Donald J. Balaban, both of Wynnewood, Pa. The groom’s mother is the office administrator for the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center. His father, who is retired, was the chief executive of Best Healthcare, a company that set up managed-care programs for hospitals and municipalities, in Philadelphia.

The groom is a stepson of Susan Weikers Balaban.

In September 2011, Dr. Hasbani received a text from a co-worker asking her thoughts on dating thin men.

The co-worker, another pediatric neurologist, wanted to set her up with a former boyfriend of hers.

Dr. Hasbani declined. Skinny guys were O.K., she replied, but the idea of dating a colleague’s former beau seemed “a little weird.”

One week later, Ms. Hasbani went on a first date with a man she had met on a dating site. They had exchanged a few e-mails but knew very little about each other.

About a half-hour into the date, the conversation turned to their careers. Dr. Hasbani told him that she was a pediatric neurologist at Children’s Hospital.

Mr. Balaban, stunned, began to mentally calculate the odds that this could be the woman his former girlfriend was talking about.

“Maybe this is awkward, but I think I should tell you that I dated one of your colleagues,” he recalls saying.

Both laughed it off, but neither told the other about the attempted setup until several dates later.